It is expected to be 2-3 months before Threads is ready to federate (see link). There will, inevitably, be five different reactions from instances:
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Federate regardless (mostly the toxic instances everyone else blocks)
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Federate with extreme caution and good preparation (some instances with the resources and remit from their users)
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Defederate (wait and see)
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Defederate with the intention of staying defederated
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Defederate with all Threads-federated instances too
It’s all good. Instances should do what works best for them and people should make their home with the instances that have the moderation policies they want.
In the interests of instances which choose options 2 or 3, perhaps we could start to build a pre-emptive block list for known bad actors on Threads?
I’m not on it but I think a fair few people are? And there are various commentaries which name some of the obvious offenders.
I’m starting to dislike the concept of ActivityPub. It gives power to the admins instead of to the users. Users should be able to decide what servers they connect to and what content they see. I hope another protocol like Nostr becomes more popular.
It gives this power to anyone willing to shell out a fiver a month.
…and the know how to set up and maintain a server, which is beyond most
There are hosting companies that offer managed mastodon instances. I assume they might offer managed lemmy instances as well in the future.
You can also use third party providers like these guys who can set up an activity pub centric website for you.
That looks like a pretty good starting point for people who have just a moderate understanding of servers and websites
Yeah that’s something I’ve not seen discussed here much. I get that people want control, but getting started with an ActivityPub centric site (like kbin) is now cheaper than ever. Get your own cheap hosting on a VPS and handle some traffic.
People can even create their own instances just to federate with everyone and absorb their content if they’re worried about the rules and regulations or “x server not connecting with y”
Overall I think it’s a pretty good system compared to a single silo like Reddit
Except when people choose option 5 from this list and defederate you because of who you are federated with.
Yeah dude people will absolutely defederate your ass if you federate with bigots or whatever. No one is owed federation or a platform of any kind.
Federation is not a right, it’s a privilege.
That’s one of the most glaring issues I see with activityPub. The Reddit style, I’m going to block you because your follow XYZ sub mentally.
I’ve got no solution for it besides hiding which places federate with who, but by looking at the content you’d be about to make an educated guess anyway
Until your instance defederated from big instances
I mean, if you yourself are your greatest enemy… Not much can be done there.
When the barrier to entry is technical in nature you get a selection of the competent in that space as your representation. It’s not perfect, but it beats zuck, musk and Huffman.
Each individual user, even though others disagree with them?
The only way to organise it so that all users get what they want is to make it easy to move instances. By and large, it is.
As an instance admin, lol.
I’m paying for the server. I’m handling all the maintenance, moderation, etc. You’re out of your mind if you think I’m gonna allow nazis or whatever other horrible shit is out there anywhere near my instance. I’m not going to enable bigotry. Fuck that.
Everyone can see my instance’s TOS as well as who I’ve defederated and why. If they don’t like it, they can find another instance. They’re not entitled to an account on mine.
Nostr is the Bitcoiner protocol. It’s simple but inflexible and not that censorship resistant (if you don’t run your own relay you can lose data). ATP is more like Ethereum, way more complex but you can build actually useful apps with it.